


Any Given Monster

by burglebezzlement



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: CW for descriptions of abusive relationship in context of an investigation, CW for references to past drowning in context of an investigation, Canon-Typical Violence, Case Fic, F/F, F/M, Monster of the Week, Monsters, Scars, Summer, Summer Vacation, Swimming, Thunderstorms, Vacation, lake, lake house, post-season one, spoilers up to the end of season one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-19 23:17:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7381513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After being rescued from Black Badge, Dolls organizes a lakeside retreat outside of the Ghost River Triangle for the team. Waverly and Nicole are on board with a relaxing vacation in a funky mid-century camp by a lake. But Wynonna’s still looking for monsters to fight — and she may just have found one.</p>
<p>Post-canon casefic/Monster of the Week with WayHaught and WyDolls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place the summer after the events of the season one finale. By this point, Dolls has been rescued and has regained control of Black Badge operations in Purgatory. Whatever possessed Waverly is long gone. Dolls hasn’t told Wynonna that he’s not human, and Doc didn’t break his trust on that.

The rough wood of the swimming platform is warm under Waverly’s skin. 

She and Nicole have been soaking in the sun for hours. Basking in it. Letting it banish the demons of last winter. 

The part of Nicole’s chest that was purple and green with bruises, where Willa shot her. The scar on Waverly’s side from the attack on the Homestead. The cold that seeped into Waverly’s bones when she touched the black ooze at the boundary of the Triangle, kept her shivering even after Wynonna and Doc banished the thing that had possessed her. The scar on Nicole’s knee from their trip to rescue Dolls.

They’re out of the fight now, for a few days. Out of the Triangle, even, which has Wynonna freaking out but which feels like an escape to Waverly, even if she knows they have to go back. Knows that this is just a vacation. 

“Waves?” Nicole says, from next to her.

“Yeah,” Waverly says, opening one eye. 

“We should go in. Wynonna’s waving. Looks like it’s lunchtime.”

Waverly pushes up and leans in to kiss Nicole. She means for it to be a quick kiss but Nicole leans in closer, and then she feels Nicole’s hands on her back, running down to the ties on her bikini —

“OI,” Wynonna shouts from shore. “Lovebirds. Food’s here.”

Nicole pulls back but doesn’t take her hands off Waverly. “Race you in?”

“Sure,” Waverly says, because Nicole likes swimming, and Nicole’s going to win, which she always enjoys.

Nicole stands up, giving Waverly a chance to admire her in her plum bikini, before diving smoothly into the water. 

Waverly gives her a moment and then jumps off the platform. When she comes up for air she gasps at the temperature of the water. The lake they’re staying on is deep, and the water under the surface is still cold. She starts swimming for shore, an easy breast stroke that keeps her head out of the water.

She can’t see Nicole, but that’s natural enough — Nicole’s like a seal, diving under the water to swim down to the sandy bottom of the lake. 

Waverly’s halfway back to the camp’s dock when she feels it — something grabbing at her heel, caught around her ankle.

She pushes back at it, but it’s gone for a moment — and then back again, like she’s been caught in a plant, but there are no plants in this part of the lake. Waverly’s heart is racing.

It grabs her heel again, and then Waverly kicks as hard as she can, freaking out, feeling nothing but water under her bare feet — she’s swimming as fast as she can, which isn’t that fast. Her breath catches in her throat.

And then it’s gone.

Waverly beats Nicole out of the water, which hasn’t happened before. And then she realizes — it must have been Nicole, grabbing her ankle. It’s the only thing that explains both the ankle-grabber and the fact that she beat Nicole back to the camp.

“That wasn’t —“ She grabs a towel from the railing. “Babe? You freaked me out back there.”

Nicole, climbing up the ladder on the dock, looks confused. “What, just because you beat me?”

“Grabbing my ankle,” Waverly says. She tosses Nicole the towel and grabs another one for herself. “That really freaked me out.”

Nicole looks alarmed. “Waves, that wasn’t me. I swear.”

Waverly searches her eyes, but there’s nothing there but sincerity. And. This is _Nicole_ , who Waverly trusts with her life. Trusts with her sister’s life. There’s no way she’d lie to Waverly.

“Okay.” Waverly lets out a long breath. “Sorry. Something grabbed me and it freaked me out.”

Nicole, toweling off, looks alarmed. “Something?”

“I thought so,” Waverly says, looking out at the lake. Or maybe someone. But there’s nobody else out there. It’s still early in the season, and it’s a weekday. No other swimmers in the water. 

Or no other swimmers Waverly can see. 

“Are you okay?” Nicole asks, coming up and wrapping Waverly’s towel around her. 

“Yeah,” Waverly says. “Yeah. I must have imagined it.”

But when she stares back at the lake, she’s not so sure.

* * *

Wynonna was against the trip from the start.

“We can’t leave the Ghost River Triangle,” she said, through a mouth full of donut. Just like Dolls: tempt her with donuts so she can’t argue when he brings up his shitty-ass idea. Joke’s on him, though, because Wynonna has experience arguing through donut-mouth.

“Peacemaker can’t leave the Ghost River Triangle,” Dolls said, his face blank like it had been since they helped him wrest back control of the Black Badge Division’s operations in Purgatory. “The Heir most certainly can. And should.”

“That just makes it worse.” Wynonna put down her donut. “I’m not leaving Peacemaker here unattended.”

“So we have Doc babysit the gun,” Dolls said. “And the homestead. You’re getting burnt out, Earp. Even Deputy Marshals get to take some time off.”

“We have lakes here in Purgatory.”

“Yes. And there are also lakes outside of the Ghost River Triangle, and those lakes have a 100% chance of not having a Revenant living at the bottom of them.”

Wynonna kept arguing, right up until the point where Waverly took her aside and asked her not to. Asked to go.

It’s not like Wynonna doesn’t get where Waverly’s coming from. They have had a hell of a year. And with Bobo back in Hell, the Revenants are hiding out again. They’ll come back — they always do — but for now, they’ve been lying low.

And she can’t deny that it’s nice being somewhere she doesn’t have to worry about someone or something attacking in the middle of the night.

But it feels wrong. She’s supposed to be avenging Willa. Again. She’s supposed to be fighting and hunting and killing the crap out of things.

Wynonna is _good_ at that.

This — whatever Dolls thinks they’ll achieve, hiding out at a cabin in the woods for a few days? She’s not good at this.

It gives her too damn much time to think.

* * *

The camp is an A-frame, nestled into ancient trees at the end of a dirt road that runs around the lake. Dolls found it — somewhere. Maybe it’s a Black Badge property. Maybe Dolls rented it from someone because he wanted to make sure his Black Badge credit cards were working again. Wynonna hasn’t asked.

There’s a wide porch, looking out over the lake and the dock. Inside, it’s furnished with the sort of shabby furniture you see at places like camps, where it’s hard to get things in and out and nobody ever bothers to replace the hand-crocheted afghans in 1970s colors or the funky old china plates. 

Waverly and Nicole have the bedroom, which is set into the back half of the first floor, next to the bathroom and under the sleeping loft. There’s a small kitchen in the main room, which also has a kitchen table with mis-matched chairs and wide couches which look out the main windows, over the deck and towards the lake. 

Dolls says the sleeping loft has four bunks, more than enough for them to share, but Wynonna hasn’t been up there to check that out. She’s sleeping down on the main floor, on one of the couches, just like she does at the Homestead.

Keeping watch on the door. Keeping her sister safe.

They’ve fallen into a rough schedule over the past few days. Waverly makes breakfast for Nicole and anyone else who gets up in time. Waverly and Nicole go out for a swim, and Dolls heads off to do whatever the hell it is he’s doing. Practicing for a lumberjack competition in the woods, maybe. Wynonna doesn’t know and she tells herself she doesn’t care. He comes back sweaty and ravenous, ready to eat whatever lunch Wynonna puts together, which is usually something stupid like an enormous pan of nachos roasted in the camp’s tiny oven, or make-your-own PB&J sandwiches.

Waverly and Dolls handle dinner between them — Dolls at the grill, and Waverly inside, with Nicole watching as she chops vegetables for salad or makes skewers for the grill. 

And then they head off to their separate bedrooms. Nicole and Waverly to their room, Dolls to his sleeping loft, and Wynonna to her couch and her bottle of Jack.

* * *

By afternoon, there’s a storm blowing up over the lake. Waverly’s secretly relieved when Dolls says no swimming because of the lightning risk.

Instead, they hang out in the living room, screen doors open to let the air in. 

Nicole’s been working her way through what Dolls is willing to tell her about Black Badge. It’s not much. She’s gotten the full scoop on the Earp curse and all the previous Revenants from Waverly, of course, and Waverly’s even let her into the Earp archives she keeps down at the station. But Dolls — he’s a harder nut to crack. So far he hasn’t even admitted whether vampires, werewolves, or ghosts are real. 

“So you keep away the monsters,” Nicole says, now.

There’s a gust of wind from the lake. It smells like trees and water. 

“It’s more complicated than that.” Dolls isn’t volunteering to explain why it’s more complicated, though.

“Not that complicated,” Wynonna says, from her couch. She’s on her back, staring up at the wide beam which runs from the sleeping loft to the front of the A-frame. “Monsters are monsters. I shoot them in the face with Peacemaker. Boom. End of monster.”

“Only some monsters,” Dolls says, but he doesn’t say anything else.

They end up playing a water-stained version of Clue that Waverly digs up from one of the cupboards. The notepad for keeping track of the clues has gone missing, so they keep track in their heads, trying to figure out how the missing rope could possibly be the murder weapon until Wynonna gives up and guesses that Colonel Mustard used the candlestick in the library. She’s wrong on every count.

After Clue, Waverly pulls out a Monopoly set that’s only partly complete, but Wynonna threatens to start walking the beam if they make her play. Instead, Nicole and Waverly head into town for more groceries, and Dolls goes out for a run in the rain. 

It rains harder that night. Waverly stares out over the lake from the sliding doors at the front. There’s a moment when she thinks she sees the drops shifting — thinks she sees _something_ out there, just beyond the lights on the porch. A shape, where the raindrops are closer together. 

“Coming to bed?” Nicole asks, from behind her, and Wynonna snickers from the couch.

Waverly turns back to the window. There’s nothing out there. It’s just a rainy night.


	2. Chapter 2

Dolls wants to train with Wynonna the next morning, which gives Waverly the perfect excuse to hang on the deck with a book. It’s research, the first official Black Badge research she’s done since they came on the trip. She brought a whole crate of books like this. Long-shot stuff she’s been letting slide while they deal with the stuff you can’t put off, like evil sisters coming back from the dead. 

She’s deep into a discussion of magic in the time of the Roman Republic when Nicole comes out from the camp. She’s wearing another two-piece, this one a shade of aqua that looks amazing against her hair.

“Hey.” She drops down into the deck chair next to Waverly’s and runs her foot down Waverly’s bare calf. “Anything good?” 

“Nothing that can compete with you,” Waverly says, abandoning Suetonius happily. “When do Wynonna and Dolls get back?”

“No idea," Nicole says. “Probably lunch, knowing Wynonna.”

“You decided not to train with them?”

“I don’t think Dolls wanted me,” Nicole says. “Let’s be honest — Wynonna’s his deputy, not me.”

Waverly tries to protest, but as an outer-ring member of Black Badge herself, she gets it.

“So,” Nicole says. “Swim? We have enough time to go get some sun before they get back.”

Waverly’s wearing shorts and a halter. She wasn’t planning on a swim — okay, she was hoping to avoid the lake. But it’s ridiculous. Isn’t it?

The lake doesn’t look evil. It looks beautiful and sun-drenched and _cool_ , which is getting relevant with the sun beating down on the deck chairs. It’s hot today, like there wasn’t just a downpour last night.

“Let me put a suit on.” Waverly grabs her suit from yesterday from where it’s been drying on the porch railing. 

Waverly and Nicole put on sunscreen outside now, because the one time they tried putting it on in the privacy of their room, they didn’t end up making it out to the lake for the swim they were planning.

They’ve been together for six months. Six weird but wonderful months. Most people don’t say their first _I love you_ while their sister has a gun trained on their girlfriend. But feeling Nicole’s hands on her back, smoothing the sunscreen into her skin, still makes Waverly burn. 

Nicole lifts Waverly’s hair off her neck, and presses a kiss to the nape before she starts working in the sunscreen. 

“So,” she says. “Race you back to the swimming platform?”

Waverly’s stomach drops and this time it’s nothing to do with Nicole’s hands. She was so ready to swim, but faced with the water… it’s freaking her out. “Maybe we can just sun on the deck,” she says.

Nicole pulls back a bit to look at her. “You okay, Waves?”

“It’s stupid,” Waverly says.

“So?”

“Something grabbed my ankle,” Waverly says. “I know it did. Yesterday.” 

“And it’s got you freaked out about going back in?”

Waverly squints out at the lake. “I know it sounds crazy.”

“Maybe there’s some branches underwater,” Nicole said. “Or a big fish.”

Waverly wants to believe that. But it didn’t feel like a fish.

It felt like a hand.

“Tell you what,” Nicole says. “Let’s go look.” She opens up the deck box on the porch and pulls out a couple battered snorkels and swim masks. “Yeah?”

“Those snorkels are disgusting,” Waverly says. “You don’t know who’s been using them.”

“So we borrow some of Wynonna’s whiskey and disinfect them.”

Waverly looks out at the lake. “And if we find something?”

Nicole grins. “We tell Dolls, he calls in the black helicopters, and the situation goes away. Yeah?”

Waverly looks down at the masks, and then up at Nicole. “Yeah.”

Wynonna’s fallen asleep on one of the chairs, in the sun. They borrow her bottle to rinse off the snorkels -- disinfect whatever might be lurking there. Waverly adjusts one of the sun umbrellas to put Wynonna in the shade before they head down to the lake.

“She’s been keyed up,” Nicole says, adjusting the straps on her eye mask. “I’m surprised she fell asleep.”

“She does that,” Waverly says, looking down at her sister fondly. “Stays up all night guarding us, and then conks out the next day.”

They head down to the dock and Waverly lets Nicole go first. She keeps her feet out of the water until Nicole puts her head up. “I don’t see anything yet,” she says. “I think you’re safe to get in.”

Waverly’s still not sure, but she puts her mask on and adjusts the snorkel before going down the ladder. The water’s cool against her skin. And that’s all it is — water. No grasping hands.

Under the water, Nicole’s skin is dappled in shades of green and gold. Her hair floats away from her like a mermaid's. Waverly reaches a hand up to hold her snorkel at an angle, keep the water from tipping in while she watches her girlfriend searching the lake bed.

When Nicole sees Waverly watching, she points up to the surface and Waverly follows her. 

“Search grid?” Nicole asks. Waverly nods.

They spend the next hour floating back and forth over the area between the camp and the swimming platform, searching the lake bed for anything but mud and sand and rocks. Sometimes Nicole spots something and dives down to pick it up, or Waverly points out something for her to investigate, but none of it’s anything that wouldn’t be at the bottom of any perfectly ordinary lake. 

They’ve started searching beyond the swimming platform when Waverly decides it’s time to give up. There’s one easy explanation here: Waverly imagined it. There was no hand.

“We can keep looking,” Nicole says, pulling herself up the ladder to the platform. “I’m game if you are.”

Waverly follows her up and spits water out from her snorkel. “I think if there were something like a patch of weeds, we’d have found it.”

“Yeah,” Nicole says. “But if it was a fish or something, it could have come from the other part of the lake.”

The rest of the lake. Way too big to search with snorkels and swim masks. Maybe if Dolls had access to sonar.

They lie out on the swimming platform for a while, letting the sun dry them before the swim back. Waverly rests her head on Nicole’s stomach, and Nicole runs her fingers through Waverly’s hair, catching on the snarls from the lake water.

It’s sunny. It’s warm. It’s everything last winter in Purgatory wasn’t, and Waverly’s willing to forget about whatever is down in the lake if she can just stay in the warmth with her girlfriend forever, or at least for a very long time.

Eventually, Nicole starts to worry about sunburn and Waverly starts to worry about Wynonna hacking apart the vegetables she brought for tonight’s salad. Nicole dives off the platform to swim in, but Waverly lowers herself in carefully. The water is cold after lying in the sun.

Waverly has the snorkel and the mask, but she chooses to swim in the way she did the day before, keeping her head above the water. 

Back at the dock, Nicole lets Waverly climb up first and then follows her. Nicole pauses, on the ladder. letting the water spill out of her snorkel, and then Waverly sees her jump.

“What’s wrong?”

“What the fuck was _that_ ,” Nicole says, climbing the last two steps up to the platform.

 “What did it feel like?” Waverly asks. 

“Something grabbed me.” Nicole takes her swim mask and puts it down into the water, carefully, making a clear window into the water.

They searched around the dock thoroughly earlier that afternoon. The view through the swim mask confirms it.

There’s nothing down there.

* * *

When Wynonna wakes up after lunch, it’s late afternoon. The sun slants across the porch at an angle. She’s covered with an afghan with a disturbingly 1970s take on earth tones and she’s got the start of a hell of a sunburn on one of her legs.

She lets her nose lead her to the beginnings of dinner. Dolls has taken over the grill, which is down below the deck, next to the walkway that leads from the deck to the dock out on the lake.

“Smells good,” she says, dropping down into the chair he’s got down here. 

“Welcome back, Sleeping Beauty,” he says.

Things have been weird since Dolls got back. He and Wynonna talk, but they don’t _talk_. He’s suddenly all work, no play, like the Black Badge reformatted Dolls into the perfect soldier he was when he first came to Purgatory.

“So, chicken?” she asks.

He adjusts one of the skewers. “Something your sister found at the grocery store in town.”

Dinner is chicken kebabs and cornbread and an enormous salad that Waverly assembles on one of the platters from the kitchen cupboards. There’s a semi-functional VitaMix blender up in the cupboard as well, and Waverly makes a weird, goopy dressing to go with it.

They eat out on the porch, watching the sun hang low over the lake. It’s only a few weeks to the summer solstice. Long evenings. Long sunsets.

Almost six months from what happened at the boundary of the Ghost River Triangle. Not that Wynonna’s been keeping track.

“I think the lake’s haunted,” Nicole says, once they’re done with dinner and everyone’s sitting there hoping someone else will volunteer for the dishes. She tells them about the afternoon of searching.

“It’s a lake monster,” Waverly says. “Definitely a lake monster.” She turns to Dolls. “Wait, are lake monsters real?”

Dolls’ expression is blank, same as it always is when Waverly and Nicole try to get him to tell them about supernatural phenomena outside the Ghost River Triangle. “I couldn’t say.”

“Can you tell us if there’s a lake monster in this lake?” Wynonna asks. “This specific lake, right here.” 

Dolls smiles. “There’s no lake monsters. Or ghosts. This is just a normal, everyday work retreat.”

Wynonna screws up her nose. “So when do we do the trust falls?” So far they haven’t done anything other than their normal training, which she could do in Purgatory.

“Not that kind of retreat,” Dolls says. He gets up and starts piling dishes on the platter to bring inside. “Have a good evening, ladies.”

* * *

Wynonna doesn’t sleep well that night, which isn’t unusual. At the Homestead, she’s tuned to all of the little noises: creaking floorboards. Doc coming in from the barn to get a drink of water. The mice who keep getting into the kitchen, no matter how many cracks Waverly tries to find and fill up with caulking and steel wool.

Here, there’s the dull sounds from the lake filtering through the windows — frogs and birds and things like that. Wind rustling through the leaves on the trees. Maybe some people find that shit relaxing, but Wynonna has trouble filtering it out and letting herself go. Letting herself sleep.

Or maybe it’s the nightmares. Wynonna had a lifetime worth of bad memories before she even came back to Purgatory.

The next morning, she wakes up feeling like kicking something’s ass, or maybe shooting a Revenant in the face. But lakeside retreats outside the Ghost River Triangle don’t provide a lot of opportunity for that. Instead, she says yes to an omelette from Waverly and then goes to put on the suit she bought to impersonate a Federal Agent when they were working on getting Dolls back from Black Badge.

There are eight other camps and summer cottages along this branch of the lake. Wynonna strikes out at the first three — empty. The next cottage has frat boys who are obviously just renting from some sucker. 

There’s a harassed-looking dad with three toddlers in the next one. He’s nice enough, but he obviously doesn’t know anything about the lake. The oldest of the kids hears Wynonna’s questions and starts screaming _Lake monster, lake monster_ at the top of his lungs while the door shuts.

“The suit is doing nothing,” Wynonna mutters to herself as she walks down the dirt road to the next camp.

It’s a nicer camp than the one they’re staying at, built out of logs. It looks a bit like Gus’s house might, it if were in the middle of a forest instead of at a ranch. It’s further back from the lake.

When Wynonna knocks at the door, there’s a shuffling from inside and then a short, elderly lady with blue hair and bright eyes swings the door open.

“Well! What can I do for you?”

“I was hoping to ask you a few questions,” Wynonna says. 

“Well, I don’t know. Who are you with?”

Wynonna told the frat boys she was a Federal investigator, but this woman looks too smart (and too not-stoned) to buy that. “I’m staying at the little cabin down the road,” she says, instead.

“Oh! You must be one of those nice lesbians,” the woman says, swinging the door the rest of the way open.

“That’s my sister and her girlfriend,” Wynonna says. She’s not sure if she should go in.

“Oh, right,” the woman says. “You’ll know what it’s like when your eyes are as old as mine. They seem like such nice girls.”

Getting old seems like one of the only things Wynonna doesn’t have to worry about, but she smiles at the woman and follows her inside. It’s decorated in a sort of country-chic that Wynonna remembers from one of her foster homes — green and white striped couches, and long white curtains that puddle on the floor. 

“So what brings you to call on an old lady?”

“I’m hoping you can help me,” Wynonna says, and then realizes how that sounds. “With information, not, like, your Social Security number or anything. I’m not selling magazines.”

The woman smiles at her, serenely. “I know that.”

“Right. So —” Wynonna takes a breath. All of her cover stories about being a Federal Agent or working on a degree in folklore are deserting her. “Is there a monster in the lake?”

The woman peers at her, and then starts laughing. “A monster in the lake! No, no, nothing like that here. We’re not living in Fairyland.”

“I know that,” Wynonna says. “But my sister had a weird experience, and I thought.” She’s not sure what she thought.

“You thought you’d do more research,” the woman says. “Well then. I’m Jane, and I work down at the Historical Society in town, and I can tell you that there’s never been a lake monster in town, nor one sighted, and the reason I know that is that the Tourism Board would wet their pants, pardon my French, over the opportunity to get even one tenth of the tourist dollars that Loch Ness and Lake Champlain pull in.” 

“So — not even any stories?” Wynonna asks.

“There’s no such thing as lake monsters, young lady.”

“Right.” Wynonna swallows. “Um. Anything else that could be paranormal in origin?”

“That’s a different question,” Jane says, her eyes narrowing. “Why don’t you tell me what you really want to know?”

* * *

“I think there’s something in this,” Wynonna says at lunch. It’s Make Your Own Sandwich Lunch, again, because Wynonna was too busy with the neighbors to think of anything better. Waverly’s making grilled sandwiches for herself and Nicole on a grease-covered panini press she found in one of the cupboards.

The lake’s sparkling beyond the trees, like something out of an Instagram post tagged #summer #blessed. It’s a lovely day, little puffy clouds up in the sky and the sun streaming down on the porch and the table. 

It’s just Dolls and Wynonna at the table, because the panini press is as broken as the oven and Waverly’s trying to get it to work.

Dolls sighs. “Something in what?”

“Waverly and Nicole’s theory about the lake monster,” Wynonna says, leaning forward. “I did some research.”

“There’s no such thing as lake monsters.”

“I know _that_ ,” Wynonna says. “But there’s something going on.” She fills Dolls in on Jane, leaving out the parts about the lake monster.

“She says they see weird lights,” she says. “Out in the lake, at night, heading towards this camp. And the woman who used to spend summers here drowned, Dolls. Out in the lake.”

“Drowning is the third-leading cause of unintentional death,” Dolls says. “It’s not exactly a smoking gun.”

“Yeah, well… Waverly felt something,” Wynonna says. “Look, Waverly isn’t going to just, like, randomly think someone’s grabbing her. I think something’s really out there.”

Dolls puts down his sandwich. “Earp, are you sure this is really about your lake monster?”

“I know it’s not a lake monster,” Wynonna mutters. 

“You need to relax,” Dolls says. “That’s why we’re out here. To get you a break. And instead of taking a damn break, you’re running around trying to find a monster to explain why your sister caught her foot on a branch and thought someone was grabbing her ankle.”

“They didn’t find any branches.” Wynonna flips her hand, like, _duh_. 

“Whatever it was, there was a natural explanation.”

Wynonna leans back in her chair. “Whatever, Scully.”

“You need some time out,” Dolls says. “You haven’t taken the time to grieve for your sister.”

Wynonna’s gut kicks, low and hard. “That’s my business.”

“When you burn out on the job, you make it my business, Earp.”

“I’ll mourn my sister when I break the curse that killed her,” Wynonna says, her voice tight. 

“Is that what this is?” Dolls raises an eyebrow. “Trying to find another curse to break?”

“There is something going on here,” Wynonna insists. “This has nothing to do with Willa.”

Wynonna can tell Dolls isn’t convinced.


	3. Chapter 3

That night, Wynonna lets Waverly and Nicole drag her down to the fire pit. It’s at the edge of the lake, with scarred plastic lounge chairs surrounding it.

Waverly remembered the marshmallows at the store, and she hunts through the fringe of woods between their camp and the next cottage down for long sticks while Nicole tries to get the fire going. The firewood’s been left out. She has to borrow some of Dolls’ lighter fluid to get it lit.

It’s a clear night, cooler than the night before, and when Wynonna leans back in the chair she can see the stars above them, the ghostly light of the Milky Way studded with brighter points of starshine.

Waverly hands Wynonna a stick with a marshmallow impaled on it, and Wynonna decides to go along with it. They’re relaxing. They’re in the woods. They’re toasting marshmallows over the fire, instead of using the fire to send a Revenant back to hell. She’s hanging with her sister, and her sister’s girlfriend, who’s pretty damn awesome, and maybe this is the kind of time she should be fighting for. 

Maybe she should be hoping for this post-curse world.

* * *

Waverly and Nicole leave Wynonna on one of the lounge chairs on the porch, wrapped in her crocheted afghan and staring out at the dark lake.

“Is she watching for monsters?” Nicole asks, her voice low.

“Maybe.” Waverly bumps Nicole’s arm with hers. 

Wynonna told them she was watching for lights from the lake — lights like the ones she says Jane described, the ones the neighbors saw out in the lake before the drowning. But even if there weren’t lights to watch for, Waverly suspects Wynonna still wouldn’t be sleeping. 

Waverly and Nicole’s bedroom has a faded blue quilt on the bed. Lamps that look like they were made from old bowling trophies sit on splintered end-tables. It’s a comfortable mattress — surprisingly comfortable.

As Waverly drifts off to sleep, her head tucked into the space between Nicole’s neck and shoulder, she thinks she hears something from outside, but Nicole holds her closer and Waverly decides that there’s nothing to worry about.

* * *

There’s a sound like a _squorch_ and Waverly’s wide awake in the dark bedroom, shaking Nicole’s shoulder to try to wake her up.

“Never mind the buttercups,” Nicole mumbles, and then she turns over. “Waves?”

Waverly keeps her voice to a whisper. “I think there’s something here.”

Nicole’s on alert all at once — cop reflexes. The drawer of the end table squeaks as she pulls it open to get her gun. 

Waverly picks up her phone. There’s just enough light from the lock screen to see a dark shadow, lurking in the corner of the room. Perfectly still. 

“Switch on the light,” Nicole whispers, and Waverly nods. “On three. One — two —“

On three, Waverly switches on the light and Nicole cocks the gun, pointing it center-mass on the intruder.

It’s not human. It’s human-shaped, but instead of flesh and blood, it looks like it’s made up of lake water, green and gold and almost see-through. 

Nicole stands and starts shooting in one even motion, aiming for the chest of the thing. 

Her bullets hit, but they don’t do anything. Don’t even rip through its body. 

“Shit,” Nicole says. 

The thing starts moving towards them — towards Waverly.

Nicole pivots and shoots again, and this time Waverly can see the bullets fly into it without even a ripple on the surface of the thing. Instead, the bullets slow, reaching the center of the chest, where a darker area of mud pulsates at the heart. 

_I’m going to get eaten by something transparent,_ Waverly thinks. _Or maybe transluscent._ She can’t remember which is which, even though it’s probably the last thing that matters when there’s a lake monster bearing down on her.

Wynonna crashes into the room, gun drawn, and puts five more bullets into it. It shifts and looks toward her for a moment, but then turns back to Waverly.

There’s something about the way it moves. Slow. Inexorable. Impossible, because how is water holding together like this?

“The bullets aren’t working,” Nicole yells to Wynonna.

“What?” Waverly can hear Wynonna reloading. “They have to work. They work on Revenants.”

“We need something else." Nicole pushes Waverly back, behind her, against the wall of the camp.

There’s a sparkle in the head. Waverly blinks, trying to remember what she was afraid of. It’s closer now, and she can see that the sparkle, the light, is looking out at her like two eyes, floating in lakewater. 

She can smell it now. Clean water. Breezes from the lake. 

Nicole tries to hit it, but as Waverly watches, her hand goes right through the thing. It’s like Nicole’s running her hands through lakewater, kicking up droplets while the lake reforms behind her. She tries to hold it back, but her hands just sink through.

It’s so close to Waverly.

Waverly’s looking up to it, and it’s filling her up, just the sight of those burning eyes. There’s a blessing she forgot. There’s a place she needs to go. She opens her mouth, barely aware of Nicole screaming beside her, fists crashing through the thing like it’s not even there —

—and there’s a _burn_ , a shock, and then the thing just falls apart.

Thirty gallons of lakewater crash down onto the wooden floor of the bedroom.

Waverly blinks. Dolls is there, and there are two contact points for a stun gun on the floor, arcing across the lakewater. 

Nicole puts the safety on and puts her gun down, slow and careful, and then wraps Waverly in her arms. “I got you.”

Wynonna looks sick. “Waves.” She throws her gun down and crosses the room to hug Nicole and Waverly both. “Are you okay, baby girl?”

* * *

Waverly still cooks breakfast the next morning, but it’s not one of her better. The hash browns are half-burned and half-raw and the omelette’s still runny on the inside.

Not that anyone notices. Nicole’s eyes are red, from staying up the rest of the night to keep watch. Waverly dropped off, eventually, on the couch with her head in Nicole’s lap. They have the windows open in the bedroom, and a box fan running on the floor, but it’s going to take a while to dry all the monster out of it.

Nobody’s sure if Wynonna’s slept. She’s been on the porch, keeping watch on the lake. 

When Dolls arrives at the table, Wynonna slides her phone towards him. It’s open to the Air BnB reviews for the cabin.

“Did you rent a haunted cabin on purpose?”

Dolls ignores the phone. “What are you talking about?”

Wynonna takes the phone back and starts reading. “I loved this charming cabin in the woods. Unfortunately, my children found the lake uncomfortable for swimming.” She looks over at Dolls with raised eyebrows, and then swipes to the next review. “This cabin had terrible maid service and also the lake is haunted. Would not stay again.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Dolls says. “The lake is not haunted.”

“Yeah, and it didn’t just try to kill my sister last night,” Wynonna snaps. 

“The lake didn’t try to kill Waverly,” Dolls says. “Something tried to kill Waverly, but it wasn’t the lake.”

“So why did you pick this cabin?” Wynonna asks. “If this is some sick training exercise, Dolls —“

“I picked the cabin because it was available on the weekend I wanted, and inside the Black Badge budget,” Dolls says. “And I think the much more likely explanation here is that someone from Purgatory found us.”

“Revenants can kill us anytime,” Wynonna says. “They don’t need to follow us on vacation.”

“But you killed it, right?” Nicole asks. “It’s gone now.”

Dolls sighs. “Probably not. That was enough voltage to put most supernatural beings down, but not enough to kill them.”

“So what the fuck was it?” Wynonna asks.

“I got a sample of the water,” Dolls says. “Sample of the lake water, too. I’m going to head into the Sheriff’s office in town, borrow some of their equipment. Get in touch with Nedley and Doc and see who’s been acting cocky, might have set this thing on us.”

“It’s not from Purgatory,” Wynonna says. She pushes her plate back. “That doesn’t explain the lights. Or the drowning.”

“We don’t need to explain a drowning,” Dolls says.

“And the lights?”

“Did you see them?” Dolls asks. “Last night?”

“No,” Wynonna mumbles. “But I was asleep, Dolls! You’re the one who keeps telling me to relax!”

Waverly shivers. “It was so quiet,” she says. Nicole rubs her shoulder. 

“It fucked with your head,” Wynonna says. “I know it did.”

Waverly doesn’t want to think about it, but she can’t stop the images from coming — the thing coming at her, impassive, just a set of sparkling inhuman eyes in a body made up of nothing but water.

And Waverly pinned in its gaze, unable to move.

She shivers again, and Nicole pulls her into a hug.

* * *

Wynonna waits for Dolls to head into town for his research before she starts searching the camp for clues.

The kitchen cabinets — Waverly’s been through those, five times over, looking for panini presses and food processors, but Wynonna decides to search them anyway. She finds nothing except inexplicable kitchen equipment. 

“What are you looking for?” Waverly asks, from the big table. She and Nicole have a bunch of thick books open. Nicole’s slumped over her book — she didn’t get much more sleep than Wynonna, last night.

“Clues,” Wynona says.  

“Well, all you’re going to find in that cabinet is jam,” Waverly says. “Anything specific?”

“I’ll know it when I see it.” Wynonna gives up on the cabinets and starts digging through the old chest that’s being used as a coffee table. Nothing but blankets and dust. 

Wynonna saves the sleeping ladder for last. It’s kind of Dolls’ territory, and she doesn’t know how he’d feel about her being up in the sleeping loft. 

The ladder up is made from unfinished two by fours nailed into the wall. There’s a safety railing across the front of the loft — sort of. Wynonna puts her weight on it and winces when it sways under the pressure.

It’s stuffy, and Wynonna opens the window at the end and turns on the ancient fan before she starts looking for — what, exactly? She’s not sure, but she’s hoping she’ll know when she sees it.

The bunks are set low, under the sloping ceiling. Dolls must hit his head every morning. She can tell which bed is his because it’s made with hospital corners, and because he’s got his single duffle bag stowed underneath. 

She bounces on one of the other mattresses. It’s horrible — just a chunk of dusty, rotting foam under the thin cotton blanket. 

“Probably the only place in town where the couch is the more comfortable option,” Wynonna mutters to herself. 

Against the back wall, there’s two low cabinets set on either side of the window. The first one opens easily. It’s got linens — extra blankets, threadbare sheets covered in Technicolor flowers, and more afghans crocheted in bright colors, like the one Wynonna’s been sleeping under down on the couch. 

The other cabinet is locked, but Wynonna’s got a steady hand and a set of lock picks. 

“Thank you, mis-spent youth,” Wynonna mutters under her breath as she hits that sweet spot where the lock gives up. 

The contents of the cabinet are neatly stacked, and it doesn’t look like anyone’s touched them in ages. It’s a mix of stuff. Books. Stacks of paper, neatly squared off. Wynonna drags out a stack of books and starts coughing as dust flies up into the airflow from the fan.

The first few books are the sort of thick, creepy textbook Waverly hangs out with, but it’s the stack of loose pages that gets Wynonna’s attention. It’s thick paper — maybe not paper, she thinks, feeling the texture. It’s covered in a weird script that looks like someone chewed up a music score and threw it up on the page.

“Waves?” Wynonna picks up the stack of pages and walks through the sleeping area to the balcony. “Hey. I think I got something.”

Waverly glances at Nicole, who’s still slumped over a book, and then back up to Wynonna. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Wynonna says. “Maybe.”

Waverly gets up, and Wynonna passes her the pages and the books from the loft before heading back to check the cupboard. There’s not much left — just a few faded photographs in an envelope.

When she climbs back down the ladder, she sees that Waverly has the pages spread out over the table.

“It’s definitely something,” Waverly says.

Wynonna tosses the envelope of photos on the table. “So what does it say?”

“I can’t read every language.” Waverly sounds annoyed. “But I think it’s Tibetan.” She points to one of the books. “That one — it’s some sort of grimoire. Whatever’s going on here, I think it is tied to the camp.” She pulls out her phone and starts looking for something, maybe a translation app. If anyone writes translation apps that work on hand-written Tibetan.

Wynonna watches her work for a bit, and then figures, hey, she’s not going to learn Tibetan. So she pours herself some of Dolls’ cold-brew coffee and starts flipping through the photos.

They’re old — square, with white borders, so maybe from the 1960s. The first few show the camp, and Wynonna recognizes the wide living room and the bedroom and the view from the sleeping loft. It’s the same couches, which doesn’t surprise her. 

When she gets to the next photo, she sucks her breath in.

The woman in the photograph is wearing a red gingham shirt with a knee-length skirt, and she’s got her hair twisted up into the sort of hair style that makes Wynonna think of prom night. But the wide cheekbones, and the honey-brown of her hair —

“Check it out,” Wynonna says, passing the photograph across the table to Waverly.

“So?” Waverly flips it over, checks the back. “It’s some woman.”

“She looks like you,” Wynonna says. “Like, June Cleaver-you.”

“I don’t see it,” Waverly says. 

Wynonna shrugs and goes back to flipping through the rest of the photos. There’s more photos of the camp, and then pictures from parties — cookouts with tiki torches, and pictures of a heavy-set man holding a fish up, and more photos of the man with the woman who looks, still, a bit like Waverly.

A woman who doesn’t look happy. Wynonna takes another look at the last photo, where the woman’s staring off into the distance while the man whispers something in her ear, and then slides the pictures back into the envelope.

* * *

Waverly’s headache from squinting at the parchment is threatening to crush her when Dolls gets back from town.

He’s got sandwiches — good sandwiches, not Wynonna’s put-everything-out-on-the-table sandwiches. Waverly wakes Nicole up and hands her a meatball sub.

When Dolls sees the scripts spread out over the table, his eyebrows raise. “What’s that from?”

“I found them in a cabinet,” Wynonna says. “Here. At the camp.”

Dolls takes a drink from the fridge and sits down.

“So?” Wynonna’s got a mouth full of sandwich, but that’s never stopped her before. “What’d you find?”

Dolls is staring at the parchment. “The water on the floor was normal lake water,” he says. “Nothing unusual about it.”

“And?” Wynonna gestures with her sandwich.

“Where did you find these?” Dolls asks, instead.

Waverly puts down her sandwich. “They were up in one of those little cupboards in the sleeping loft.”

“So Doc was right when he said this didn’t track us from Purgatory,” Dolls says, heavily. “This tells me what we’re looking at.”

“Awesome,” Nicole says. “So what do we need?”

Dolls shakes his head. “Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s going to be that simple.”

He explains while the rest of them keep eating. “If I’m right — and I think I am. If I’m right, this thing is a tulpa.”

Wynonna and Nicole’s expressions are blank, but Waverly snaps her fingers. “Right. Tibet.”

“Exactly.” He flips over one of the pages. “It’s a Tibetan thought form. You use your thoughts to animate matter. Normally it’s soil or dirt, but this one seems to be using water.”

“So?” Wynonna asks. “How do we kill it?”

“Normally, you just have to kill or incapacitate the person who created it.”

“Normally?” Waverly asks. “That doesn’t sound good.”

Dolls picks up his sandwich. “We don’t know who created this.”

Wynonna’s expression is grim when she looks back down at the photographs. “What if the dude’s dead?”


	4. Chapter 4

It takes several hours of research for Dolls to confirm that the dude who created the tulpa is, indeed, dead.

Or at least the most likely suspect is dead. It’s the former owner of the camp, the one who built the place — almost certainly the one in the photographs Wynonna found, and the owner of the Tibetan manuscripts and the creepy grimoires. He was a former cultural attache, and spent several years in Tibet before retiring early, with his wife.

His wife, who looked like Waverly. 

His wife, who according to the files Dolls has pulled, was found drowned in her bed.

“So not a normal accidental drowning,” Wynonna says to Dolls, who’s hunched over his laptop. She thinks about the monster cornering Waverly — the way it was going for her mouth. _Drowned in her bed._ Was that what was about to happen to Waverly?

It’s unacceptable. No monster gets to do that to Wynonna’s little sister. They are going to find a way to grind this thing into the mud, dead creator or no.

“Your friendly neighborhood source left that part of the drowning out,” Dolls says, although he’s distracted by something else on the computer. “I have worse news. There have been two more anomalous drownings on the lake since then. Not at this camp, but the victims fit the pattern.”

Wynonna stares at the parchment, wondering what makes someone decide they need to create a monster.

Or maybe the human was the monster here. Not like the creepy crawlies have a monopoly on inhumanity. 

“So what are the chances that the stun gun fried it?” Nicole asks. 

Dolls gets out the Black Badge field manual. Waverly tries to snag it, presumably to look up vampires and werewolves and ghosts after looking up tulpas, but she’s not fast enough.

He flips through the pages for a bit before shaking his head. “The stun gun can fry it, but it can’t kill the thing. Just send it back to the lake. It’s still out there.”

“So what kills it?” Wynonna asks. “Peacemaker?” 

“We can’t risk taking Peacemaker out of the Ghost River Triangle.”

“Holy ash tree,” Wynonna says. “Bone of a saint. Blood? Maybe if we get enough blood.” It seems like there should be some amount of blood that will solve this problem. 

“None of the above,” Dolls says, shutting the manual. “Looks like our options are electricity or killing the caster. And one of those options is currently six feet under.”

“But the stun gun didn’t kill it,” Nicole says.

Dolls nods. “Not powerful enough.”

“So we jack it into the mains,” Wynonna said. “Feed it the power line coming into the house. Come on, Dolls, there has to be a way.”

“Still not enough power,” Dolls says. “We’d have to rent ten generators and have them all running to have even a hope of getting enough voltage to put this thing down. And even then, the noise from the generators would keep it down in the lake.”

“And we can’t see it in the lake,” Waverly says. She shivers.

Nicole looks up from the photographs and then out at the lake. 

Outside the doors, the wind’s picked up, and there are clouds building — towering clouds rising up into the sky. 

“We just need electricity?” Nicole asks. She puts her hand on one of Waverly’s spell books. “I think I might have another way.”

* * *

It’s full dark now. Wynonna and Dolls are pressed back against one of the walls of the camp, waiting for the monster to come out of the lake.

Thunder rumbles, low, in the distance, and Wynonna looks up. There’s no stars, not like the night before, when the monster attacked Waverly. Their plan won’t work with a clear night, but Wynonna’s suddenly worried that the monster may not come out with the storm so near. 

They can’t just leave the lake house with a monster intact. And Wynonna’s not letting anything that attacked her sister walk, swim, or fly free, Revenant or not.

“So why did you bring us out here?” Wynonna asks, trying to distract herself from worrying about the monster. She keeps her voice low so it won’t carry over the water. “Is this some sort of sick training mission?”

Dolls huffs, his breath warm against Wynonna’s cheek. “Nothing like that.”

“So why?” Wynonna leans back against the rough wood of the camp. “You haven’t exactly been making us do team-building exercises out here.”

Dolls is quiet. Wynonna knows him well enough, by now, to know that he’s thinking — figuring out what he wants to say.

“I needed to tell you something,” he says, finally. “I thought it might go better if I told you outside the Ghost River Triangle.”

Wynonna’s getting nervous. “Why?”

“You said something to me, at the party.” He doesn’t have to say which party. There’s only one party any of them think about. “When you thought you weren’t the Heir. You said you were just human again, and I wouldn’t know what that felt like.”

“Oh.” Wynonna’s surprised, because Dolls isn’t usually the sort of person to hang on to someone hurting his feelings. “Sorry about that. I — didn’t mean it like it sounded.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Dolls said. “I —” He lets his breath out. “It was easier telling Holliday.”

“I’m sorry I’m not as warm and fuzzy as Doc motherfreakin’ Holliday,” Wynonna snaps, and then — “Wait, Doc knows?”

“He said his sense of honor as a Southern gentleman prevented him from telling you.”

That sounds like Doc. And depending on what Dolls is going to say, it might explain why Doc suddenly felt like playing babysitter to the Homestead and Peacemaker for a few days, instead of joining them at the lake. 

“At the party,” Dolls says. “You said I wouldn’t understand because I’d only been human.”

Wynonna can’t see him. The sky’s clouded over, and there’s no light. But she can feel him, warm beside her. 

“You were wrong.” From his voice, Wynonna can tell he’s looking out at the lake, not towards her. “I’m human, but… I’m not only human.”

Wynonna’s breath catches. “What does that mean?”

Instead of answering, he turns to her. His fingers brush her cheek, turning her to face him. His eyes suddenly flare — _orange_. Orange and slit like a cat’s eyes.

Glowing, in the darkness. 

Wynonna watches the light fade, watches until Dolls is just an outline and a warm presence by her side. 

She’s not sure how she feels — angry he didn’t tell her? Scared that the man she’s been hunting Revenants with is apparently a monster? Or just really, really turned on.

Maybe mostly that last one.

“Dolls,” she says, louder than she means to.

But he’s turning away from her. She’s stung until she remembers — _right, secret operation to destroy the tulpa._

Nicole whistles, low, the signal they agreed upon to indicate that the tulpa’s left the lake.

And then they wait for Waverly’s signal.

* * *

Waverly can smell the tulpa before she sees it.

She remembers the smell from the night before. Clean water, like the air across the swimming platform.

Waverly took the hardest job. Wynonna and Nicole both fought her on that. Tried to keep her back, keep her safe. But Waverly knows that she’s the tulpa’s target. She’s the one most likely to be able to send this thing — well. Not back to Hell.

But at least they can leave the lake safer than they found it.

This time, Waverly knows not to look into the tulpa’s eyes. She keeps her own eyes down, listening for the _squorch_ it makes as it crawls from the lake.

Just a few more steps, she thinks. She needs to lure it in, underneath the tower that Dolls spent all afternoon lashing together out of rusty metal from the garage. She moves carefully. The spray paint Dolls used to draw the sigils claimed to be waterproof, but she doesn’t want to chance it.

From the sound of the thing — from the burning light she can see just out of the corner of her own eyes — she can tell it’s almost inside. Almost trapped.

Almost inside, but not quite. Waverly takes a step closer. _Here you go. Here’s the bait._

And then it warps, moving in a half-jump, half-glide, and now it’s fully inside the trap.

But Waverly’s trapped inside with it.

* * *

Waverly must have hit the button, because Wynonna sees the lights spring up around the tower, illuminating —

 _Shit_. Illuminating Waverly, because she’s inside the trap. Under the very large, very metal tower Dolls put together, and the tulpa's got her cornered against one leg of the tower.

“Nicole!” Wynonna yells.

Wynonna’s running towards the tower, but Dolls grabs her arm before she can run across the first border of symbols, the border keeping the tulpa trapped. Keeping it trapped _with her little sister_.

Waverly must not have looked at the tulpa’s eyes, because she’s not staying still, like a spooked rabbit, the way she was last night. She’s fighting. Fighting and losing. As Wynonna watches, the tuple traps her in arms of water.

Dolls has his stun gun drawn, but he’s not aiming it yet.

“What are you waiting for?” Wynonna yells. “Kill it already!”

“If I hit it, it’s going to send it back to the lake,” Dolls says, his voice tight. “We might not get a second chance.”

* * *

Nicole charges up from the lake, gun drawn, but there’s no clear shot and even if there were, it’s not like the gun did anything to the tulpa the night before.

Instead, Nicole throws the gun aside, and before Wynonna can catch her arm, she’s charging across the lines of symbols. Throwing herself at the tulpa. But it’s not working. Her kicks and punches are ineffectual, sliding through the tulpa like hands through lakewater.

“Try — try the heart,” Waverly chokes out, from the tulpa’s grasp.

Nicole thrusts her hand into the monster’s chest. The water fights her. Kicking the thing’s legs just lets her feet splash through, but the water in the chest is viscous — sticky, like reaching into molasses.

She pushes harder, putting her whole weight into it, and then finds a dense heart, muddy and tight at the center of the tulpa’s torso.

And then she _squeezes_.

Waverly gasps, and the tulpa breaks apart into droplets, like it’s been split into a million raindrops. It’s blowing up around them, and suddenly they’re both _inside_ the tulpa, inside the drops of water as they fragment and splatter. It’s huge, expanding further and further, but without the coherence of the water, it doesn’t seem to have the same hold. Doesn’t have the same power.

“Come on,” Nicole says, grabbing Waverly’s hand and pulling. “We have to get out of here.”

She thinks she’s killed it until they’re back over the symbols.

It’s not dead. Instead, it’s twenty feet high — a monster formed out of raindrops that flash with the light from the spotlights Waverly set up around the tower.

It’s larger than the tower Dolls built. But it’s still inside the trap.

 _Just_.

* * *

Wynonna grabs Waverly and hugs her, hard, before letting her go and turning to face Dolls.

“We need to put the juice on it,” Wynonna says. “Do the lightning spell, Dolls. You’ve got to do it now.”

The tulpa is gaining water, from somewhere, and its body is shifting, from raindrops to a whipped froth, like whitecaps on the lake. Its eyes are twin bonfires, high above the camp.

“The storm’s not close enough,” Dolls says. “The spell can only attract the lightning if the potential’s there.”

There’s a rumble of thunder while he says it, but he’s right — it’s far off. But.

“If it breaks out of the trap, we may not get another chance,” Wynonna argues. She wants to see this thing fry _now_. “And we may start attracting attention from the other camps.”

“Good point,” Dolls says, and he kills the lights.

“Great,” Wynonna says. “Now we can’t see the crazy water-monster. How does that help?”

Dolls shrugs. “You made a good point about the civilians.”

They can still see the thing’s eyes, burning above them. Nicole has her arms around Waverly, who’s soaking wet. 

They keep watch, while the storm comes in. While the rain starts. It’s just tiny droplets at first but then it’s pouring down, bucketing rain and muffling everything in the soft sound of water.

“It’s going to wash away the trap,” Wynonna says, and Dolls looks up just as a flash of lightning illuminates his face. 

“Right,” he says. “You stay back.”

Nicole was the one who found the spell, but Dolls insisted on being the one to cast it. Which makes a little more sense, now that Wynonna knows he’s not entirely human. 

Wynonna and Waverly and Nicole huddle next to the camp while Dolls goes out to the trap. They can hear him chanting over the sound of the rain, and they see the flare when the second set of symbols lights up, glowing green in the darkness. 

Dolls pauses and looks up. The tulpa’s still enormous, eyes burning a flickering gold above him.

And then Dolls says the last word of the spell. There’s a moment of quiet when Wynonna’s terrified it didn’t work, and then there’s a flash like daylight and a cracking noise, louder than seems possible, compressing the air like someone reached into Wynonna’s chest, and a smell of ozone. The bulbs in the lights crack and shatter, sending sparks out into the night. 

And then — silence, except for the rain.

* * *

“You rescued me,” Waverly says, into the quiet that follows the lightning strike.

Nicole brushes water away from Waverly’s face. “Always.”

“No,” Waverly says, her voice shaking because she gets to do this rescued-princess crap way too often, but the adrenaline surge never turns into something she’s used to. Her hands are shaking. “You rescued me.”

“Every time, babe.” Nicole kisses her forehead and then kisses her mouth, her lips wet with rainwater, and then pulls back. “I am going to rescue you every time.”

Nicole holds her closer, running her hand over Waverly’s scar, and Waverly looks out at the lake, lit up by lightning from the storm.

* * *

Wynonna comes down to the tower the next morning to find Dolls taking it apart, carefully, and putting the rusty metal back in the garage underneath the camp.

It’s another lovely day in paradise. Maybe a bit humid, but the sun’s out and the lake’s sparkling. Sparking and safe. Monster-free, thanks to Black Badge Division. Nicole and Waverly are out at the swimming platform again, having one last screw-you-lake-monster sunbathing session before they all head home.

Home to the Ghost River Triangle, and the real monsters.

“Hey,” Wynonna says. Awkwardly. Because there’s no easy way to have the “so-now-I-know-you’re-a-monster” talk. 

“Don’t want to lose my deposit,” Dolls says, pulling down some metal wire and coiling it neatly around his forearm.

“Are you kidding?” Wynonna puts the coffee she brought for him down on the picnic table. “They should be giving you the rental for free for destroying that thing.”

Dolls looks over at her. “Some monsters need to be put down.”

It’s as good an opening as he’s going to give her, so Wynonna figures what the hell.

“I don’t care what you are, Dolls,” she says. “I know who you are.” 

Dolls puts the wire down on the table and picks up the coffee. “Who’s that?”

“My partner.”

“Yeah, well.” Dolls takes a sip of the coffee. “I’m still a monster.”

Wynonna half-smiles. “You say that like being the Earp heir isn’t being part-monster.”

“I shot your sister,” Dolls says.

Wynonna takes a deep breath, because that’s the other monster in this room.

“You coming back to shoot my sister is one of the reasons why I know you’re not a monster,” she says. She stares out at Waverly and Nicole, on the swim platform, and then sits down across from Dolls. “What happened with Willa….” She’s got a lump in her throat.

“If there had been another way,” Dolls says. 

“I know,” Wynonna says. She can feel tears threatening, which, come on, not the Wynonna Earp way. She blinks a couple times and then looks back up at Dolls. “There wasn’t.”

Wynonna’s run it through her mind a thousand times, sitting up at night at the Homstead and watching for Revenants. Thought about it while watching the lake for monsters. She’s tried a thousand times to find a way to end the stand-off at the border of the Ghost River Triangle without either of them needing to shoot her sister.

She keeps coming back to one thought — _If Willa had trusted her_. But — years in a treehouse with Bobo Del Ray? With whatever that dark force was echoing in Willa’s mind? Wynonna can’t blame Willa for anything she did after that.

It all comes back to the attack on the Homestead in the end. 

Which means it all comes back to Warp Earp. Because you don’t have to be a monster to do monstrous things.

Dolls clears his throat. “So.”

“So we’re both monsters,” Wynonna says. “Or neither of us are monsters.”

She meets his eyes and she can’t get the thought of how they looked the night before out of her head. There’s a million questions she wants to ask. Can he control the eyes? Control the monster? Is it something Black Badge did to him? Did he volunteer?

She’ll probably ask him all those questions, back in Purgatory. She may even get some answers.

But right now, there’s only one question that matters.

“Still partners?” she asks.

“Still partners,” Dolls says.

He looks out at the monster-free lake, and smiles.

* * *

Out on the swimming platform, Nicole’s absently running her fingers over Waverly’s scar.

The sun’s warm, but the feeling of Nicole’s hand on her is warmer. Waverly’s letting herself drift. Letting herself enjoy being close to Nicole, enjoy the feeling of the completely-not-evil lake water lapping against the swimming platform after a boat’s gone past and thrown up waves on the surface of the lake.

“Back to the Ghost River Triangle tomorrow,” Nicole says, running her hand absently down Waverly’s side.

Waverly shivers. “Yeah.”

She opens her eyes and sees Nicole looking at her, steadily.

“You’re okay with that?” Nicole says. “With going back?”

Waverly’s first instinct is to say _Wynonna’s my sister, of course I’m going with her_ , but when she looks into Nicole’s eyes, she sees only concern.

And Waverly gets that. She’s seen Nicole in a hospital bed. She’s seen Nicole get shot. It’s hard to do that and keep going.

It’s not like it was the first time Nicole’s seen her in danger. It’s not even the first time Nicole’s been the one to rescue her.

Waverly pulls Nicole down for a kiss and almost loses her train of thought, because Nicole’s lips on hers are enough to make her feel punch-drunk.

When they pull apart, Nicole doesn’t ask again, but Waverly can still see the question in her eyes.

“Look at the lake,” Waverly says, waving her hand.

Nicole looks around. “So?”

“It’s safe now,” Waverly says. “Three people drowned because of what that guy decided to call up, but we stopped it. It’s not going to drown anyone else. We did that.”

“It wouldn’t have been worth losing you,” Nicole says. 

“Or you,” Waverly says, because the sight of Nicole on the floor of the Sheriff’s office isn’t one she’s ever going to forget. “But there are a lot more people who’ll be at risk if Wynonna doesn’t break the curse, or if the Rev heads figure out a way out of the Ghost River Triangle.” She stares out at the lake for a moment, back towards the house, and then looks back up at Nicole. “Are you okay with going back?”

“I took an oath to serve and protect. Taking risks is part of that.” Nicole brushes her hand over Waverly’s cheek. “But if you ever want to get out — I’m out, too. No questions asked.”

“Got it,” Waverly says, and she kisses Nicole again before something occurs to her and she pulls back. “But you know I’m just going to keep going back, right? Wynonna’s my sister.”

Nicole smiles. “You’re an Earp. I wouldn’t expect anything else.”

An Earp. Well, maybe. Waverly hasn’t figured out how to tell anyone about that.

“I think Wynonna’s waving us in for lunch,” Waverly says, instead.

Nicole’s face is close to hers. “Do you want another Wynonna-sandwich extravaganza?” she asks, and then she kisses Waverly, just a little, before pulling back. “Or do you want to stay out here with me?”

Waverly looks over at the shore. Wynonna’s on the porch, hands on her hips. As Waverly watches, she shakes her head and heads back inside.

“It’d be a shame to waste all this monster-free lake time,” Waverly says.

Nicole leans in again, stopping just short of a kiss, and laughs. “My thoughts exactly.”


End file.
